


And All That Dancing

by doorrepairgirl



Category: Flight of the Conchords (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doorrepairgirl/pseuds/doorrepairgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bret and Jemaine in a tale of journalism, bears, and impromptu home repair projects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All That Dancing

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my three magical elves for advice, encouragement, and humor consultation, and to the many people who let me hijack their living rooms for repeated viewings of the DVDs.
> 
> Written for teshian

 

 

It's a Wednesday afternoon when Murray calls them to an emergency band meeting in his office at the consulate. Bret and Jemaine say hi to Greg on the way in. Greg offers them free copies of the latest issue of the New Zealand Tourism Board magazine, but Bret tells him they already have three. This is true; Murray signed them each up for a subscription apiece to boost the circulation numbers, and Dave always brings over the copy he receives and tells them to stop sending him "stupid pictures of kangaroos and shit."

  


* * *

  


"I'm present and Jemaine's present," Bret says before they even sit down, part of his ingenious new plan to circumvent roll call.

"Hmm?" Murray says, looking up from the picture he's been drawing on his sheaf of paper. It's a zebra wearing a party hat. "Oh, hello guys. Sit down, let me just," he says, motioning at the zebra. He carefully flips through a couple of sheets of paper before setting the pad back down in a very official manner - Bret sees an alligator flip by on the next page, and also something that might be an ocelot. It's hard to tell upside down.

"Band meeting," Murray says, writing carefully. "Bret?" 

Bret sighs and begins formulating a new plan for next time.

"Well?" says Murray.

Bret holds out a moment longer before he says, "Present. And Jemaine's present too."

"I think Jemaine can tell me that for himself. Jemaine?"

"Bret's right, I am present," Jemaine confirms. Bret nods to him, to show that he appreciates the back up. Bret had told Jemaine about his plan. Maybe Jemaine will help him figure out another plan.

"Murray, present," Murray informs himself, making another note on the page. "Now, you may be wondering why I've called you here."

"I guess I was kind of wondering that," Jemaine says, sounding a bit surprised that Murray could have guessed this about him.

"I didn't bother to wonder, because I knew I would find out when I got here," Bret tells them. Jemaine tilts his head to the side, possibly considering the wisdom of this as a life philosophy. 

"Well, all that wondering can cease now, because I am going to tell you," Murray assures them.

"See?" Bret whispers to Jemaine, and Jemaine says, "Yes, you were right."

"I am going to tell you," Murray continues in a louder voice, "That I have gotten you into a comedy musical performance this weekend."

"You got us a gig?" Bret asks, disbelieving. And for good reason, it turns out.

"No," Murray says, "But I got you the next best thing: press passes." Bret and Jemaine look at Murray for a moment, and then look at each other, trying to determine the proper reaction to this news. "Press get into shows free!"

"But we're not journalists. We're musicians," Bret points out, wondering if perhaps Murray has forgotten the sort of work he's supposed to be lining up for them. That might explain why they've had so few gigs recently. Or, indeed, ever.

"Look, fellows, it's all well and good for you to write 'songs' with 'notes' and 'lyrics' and 'jokes,' but that's not enough for a musical career!"

"That's funny, it seems like that would be exactly enough," Jemaine says. Bret nods; this has always been his impression as well.

"Guys, you have to go beyond the music. I'm sending you to see this band because they are big in the comedy-slash-parody-slash-novelty acoustic rock and/or folk circuit. One of the biggest. This will be a real opportunity to see how it's done." 

Murray hands them each a small laminated card that says 'Press' at the top in large letters. Bret examines his; his last name is spelled wrong, and the picture on the card is clearly photocopied from the fan newsletter. Mel's hair obscures part of his face and his left shoulder. "Oh, and you'll have to write a review afterward for your music news website."

"But we don't have a music news website," Jemaine points out.

"You will when Greg's done making it," Murray tells him, then calls out the door, "How's that going, Greg?" When Greg doesn't come to the door and answer, Murray gets up to go look out into the main office, then returns to his chair and makes a note on his notepad. "Greg is on the phone." He looks up at them and says, "That's all I have. Anything you'd like to discuss?" Bret and Jemaine shake their heads; it's not like this is their emergency meeting.

  


* * *

  


It's a Friday night, and Jemaine and Bret are seated in the Press section to the far left side of the stage. The Press section is actually a very small table, barely big enough for the two of them, so it's a lucky break that they appear to be the entirety of the journalistic contingent in attendance tonight. 

Jemaine has brought along a small notebook and is making a serious face, but Bret knows this is because he's hoping no one will notice he forgot to bring a pen. Bret is sitting back in his chair. He wonders if people will think he is critically considering the lighting design (Christmas lights around the edge of the stage, and a watery spotlight) and the sound system (there doesn't appear to be one.) This is not really the case; Bret tries not to be critical as a general rule.

  


* * *

  


"How can you call that a band, anyway? Just one guy on stage," Bret says at the end of the show.

"I don't think you call it a band when it's just one person," Jemaine says, looking around at the dozens and dozens of people currently making their way out of the club. "I think he's an artist."

"Good, then I guess you'll have no problem writing a professional-style journalistic review for our music news website," Bret says, just a little bit too loudly.

"Wow, Jemaine, you're a journalist now? That's so interesting." Mel leans in from the next table over, trying to make eye contact with Jemaine and almost falling into Bret's lap in the process. She does not appear terribly troubled by this possibility. "I had no idea you were so multi-talented. You should talk to Murray, maybe you can write something for the fan newsletter. Or you and I could collaborate, since I'm the president of the fan club and all. I mean, we'd have to spend late nights together, working on our articles, drinking coffee and telling each other about our ideas and our dreams, and maybe we'd be working really hard one night and suddenly you'd realize that it's 3 AM and it's too late for you to take a cab home and--"

"Mel," Bret says for the fourth time, finally breaking her concentration, "This is kind of just something we're doing on the side for now."

"Oh, wow, that's really cool," she says with a smile, turning her attention back to her table briefly as Doug leans around her to say hi. Bret and Jemaine reply in kind and manage to flee while Mel is distracted.

  


* * *

  


Jemaine's bed is empty when Bret wakes up on Monday. This is only slightly unusual, but Bret does start to get a little concerned when Jemaine doesn't turn up in the kitchen or on the couch either. He continues the hunt after he has a bowl of cereal - he's concerned, but not concerned enough to warrant skipping breakfast - and ends up finding Jemaine at his workbench.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Bret asks him. 

Jemaine flicks off the blow-torch and flips up the mask on his welding helmet. "What?"

"I said, 'Hey, what are you doing?' " Bret repeats.

"Oh," Jemaine says, "That's what I thought you said." He goes to flip the mask back down, but Bret catches his hand halfway. It's creepy having conversations with Jemaine when he's wearing the mask. It makes Bret feel like he's talking to a robot executioner.

"We have band practice in two hours, so don't get all caught up and forget."

"Oh, thanks for the reminder, Bret," Jemaine says, "It's tough to keep track of time in here since the clock melted."

Bret lets go and Jemaine brings the mask down over his face. "You're welcome," Bret says, not entirely satisfied with how this conversation has gone, and a little annoyed now because it was his clock Jemaine melted.

Jemaine fires up the blow-torch again and turns back to his work. It's very bright once the blow-torch gets involved, but Bret manages to peer over his shoulder and make out the head and torso of a tiny glass monkey which Jemaine appears to be fusing onto the tiny glass body of a horse. It's actually nicer looking than the butterfly he made for Sally, and it has the same number of limbs, only bigger and more complicated. Jemaine's always telling him that the limbs are the trickiest part, and most prone to melting in odd directions.

  


* * *

  


Jemaine shows up for band practice a couple of minutes late, but Bret has made a point of starting exactly on time to teach Jemaine a lesson about dedication. Bret's pretty sure that's the lesson here. Maybe there's more than one lesson, it's not like Bret sat down and made a chart.

So far Bret has tuned his guitar and thought about things they could write a song about, like birds or fish. He summarizes his progress so far for Jemaine so he can get up to speed and hop into the band practice groove, already in progress.

"You want to write a song about birds and fish?" Jemaine asks as he starts tuning his guitar. They just had band practice the day before, so this doesn't take very long.

"Birds _or_ fish," Bret corrects him. "But maybe we could fit them both in. Some birds swim. Not a lot of fish live in trees though."

"Are you sure you weren't just watching a nature documentary while you waited for me?" Jemaine asks, moving his eyebrows in a way that means he's suspicious of Bret's claims. Bret has to admit, it doesn't help his story that the TV is tuned to a station showing video of a fish swimming frantically upstream, possibly somewhere in the Canadian wilderness.

"Inspiration has to come from somewhere," Bret says, because he knows Jemaine cannot argue with the truth. Jemaine seems to agree, and they get down to practicing.

Three or four songs in, while Bret is trying to find new things to say in favor of the word _affirmative_ as the robotic version of _yes_ , Jemaine interrupts him and says, "Do you ever think what it would be like not to have anybody to banter with?"

"No," Bret says. This is true; Bret's always had Jemaine around to banter at, with, or near.

"I was just thinking about that time you left the band," Jemaine goes on, "and I had to do gigs with that cassette tape. I mean, the music part worked okay, but the banter was terrible."

"Yeah, I don't think it qualifies as banter with less than two people," Bret says. Jemaine very rarely mentions the time he spent performing opposite a cassette tape, and when he does it always makes Bret feel very uncomfortable, possibly because at the time Jemaine and Murray had been awfully big fans of the cassette tape solution. "Is this about the show we went to see the other night? With the one guy?"

"No," Jemaine says, but it's not very convincing.

"Did you write that review yet?" Bret asks. He'd kind of forgotten about Murray's whole 'press pass' charade, but he thinks maybe he should offer to help Jemaine write it. He can mention that thing about the Christmas lights. 

"Yeah," Jemaine says, "It's not very long, but I asked Murray and he said I could be terse if I wanted that to be my journalistic signature."

"Can I read it?" Bret asks. Not that he really needs to. He was there, after all, he shouldn't need Jemaine to tell him what he saw.

"I already gave it to Greg. He said he didn't mind typing it up because it was short and I my handwriting is quite legible."

"That's good," Bret says, "Especially since you're a terrible typist."

"Yeah, Greg's a good guy." Jemaine tries out a couple of chords, then looks at Bret. "Did you mean it's good that I have legible handwriting, or good that Greg was typing up the review for me?"

Bret shrugs. "I dunno. Both, I guess."

Jemaine nods and goes back to his tricky chords. It's kind of an interesting combination; maybe it'll work for the song about fish. Or birds.

They finish practice, but things aren't clicking like they usually do. Plus, Bret still hasn't thought of anything new to say about the word _affirmative_. In general, it's one of their less successful practices. Not that Bret is keeping a log tracking the relative success of their band practices; that's more of a Murray thing, and that's why he doesn't get to attend anymore.

  


* * *

  


After practice, Jemaine wants to go work on his glass project some more, so Bret goes to visit Dave at work. He doesn't like being in the apartment when Jemaine's not around; it's too quiet and the furniture seems too large.

Dave is in a better mood than usual. He doesn't yell at Bret, and he even lets Bret come around behind the counter, like he too works in a pawn shop.

"Oh, hey, I found this cool musical instrument thing I thought you might like," Dave says, "Hold on, lemme find it..." He ducks into the back room, and emerges a moment later holding a... thing.

"What is it?" Bret asks. He's never seen a musical instrument quite like it, unless it's some sort of brightly colored bagpipe. With eyes.

"I dunno, it's a kid's toy or something. But I know you play that little kid piano thing sometimes. See, it makes noise," Dave tells him, squeezing one of the protrusions. It makes a high squeaking sound, and as Dave turns it around and squeezes another one, Bret finally recognizes the object as a multi-colored octopus with alarmingly human-looking eyes. Bret takes it from him and squeezes each of the eight legs in turn, verifying that it is indeed playing a scale, and is remarkably close to being in tune.

"That's really neat, man," Bret says, though he turns the octopus so its wide, staring eyes aren't focused on him. "How much do I owe you for it?"

"Nothing; I don't really know where to put it in here. Not a lot of call for kids' stuff right now." 

Bret looks around at the stacks of battered paperbacks and the antler-handled knives and the turquoise-inlaid belt buckles littering the counter and shelves. "I see what you mean."

"And anyway, I thought it might remind you of home. You have those in Australia, right?" 

"New Zealand," Bret says automatically, but then he feels a little bad. After all, Dave has just done something nice for him. "But I bet we do have some, at least in aquariums. And probably in the ocean."

"Right, exactly," Dave says, clearly not listening anymore. "Oh, hey, that's right," he says, picking up a page of the newspaper off the counter and waving it in Bret's face. "Did you hear about this? We totally have to go to the zoo."

"The zoo? Why do you want to go the zoo?" Bret can't actually read the newspaper when it's flying by his face at high speed. It's a failing he's working to overcome.

"It's free, man," Dave says, finally setting the page back on the counter. At the top of the page Bret sees the phrase 'Bear Attack!' in very large letters. He looks at Dave, who says, "No, down here." He points to the very last paragraph on the page, which explains that the zoo will not be charging admission on the coming Wednesday. 

"Sounds neat," Bret says. He's not too worried; he knows he can definitely outrun Dave if things get dire.

  


* * *

  


On Tuesday, Bret and Jemaine go to meet Dave for lunch. They're supposed to try some new bakery, because Dave thinks the clerks are hot and because, so he claims, "they make the best damn cookies in the city, I swear." Bret doesn't really like cookies, but Jemaine's a bit of a connoisseur.

Just as they're approaching the shop, Bret hears a chirping voice and tenses up instinctively.

"Hey! Imagine seeing you guys here," Mel says. "Hi, Bret. Hi, Jemaine."

"Hi, Mel," they both say.

"Oh, Jemaine," Mel says, "I read your review of the Jonathan Coulton show on your website. I was really impressed, you're such a good writer. I love how you really captured the feel of the night, the experience of seeing such a spectacular artist. And you have such a unique perspective, knowing what it's like to be a performer like him! Are you going to write more? Are you seeing any shows this weekend? I have a spare pen if you want to borrow it and hold it firmly in your masculine yet oddly beautiful hands--"

"Thanks, Mel," Jemaine says, looking rather pleased at the praise. "Murray hasn't said if we're covering any more shows. I guess he could send us out at any time and I'd have to jump in and write about the whole thing. Some of the reviews could end up even longer than this one."

"Wow," Mel says, "This one was really good. I read it a bunch of times. I really liked when you said," she pauses, digging into her bag and fishing out a slightly rumpled piece of paper. "When you said the club was 'dark like the inside of a whale would probably be dark, except there wouldn't be twinkle lights inside a whale. Unless it had swallowed some twinkle lights, but even then they wouldn't be plugged in.' "

"That's true," Bret has to admit, "It was pretty dark in there." He's glad Jemaine noticed the lighting too; now he doesn't feel as bad about missing his chance to help out.

"And I really like how you described Jonathan as 'an intense and soulful songwriter, with a steady hand on the guitar and a voice like an angel, if angels sometimes dressed kind of like lumberjacks.' "

"Thanks, Mel," Jemaine says again. He casts a look at Bret. "Anyway, we're supposed to be meeting someone, so we should let you go. Wherever it is you were going."

"Oh, right, your friend Dave's probably in there," Mel says, craning her head toward the bakery to see if she can spot him.

"Yeah, we should go," Bret says, "Bye, Mel." He dodges her attempt at a parting hug and heads toward the door without even waiting for Jemaine. Bret already has one hand on the door handle when he hears Mel's next comment.

"Oh, and I love your t-shirt," she says to Jemaine, "I was thinking about getting one just like it. Even before I saw that you had one," she goes on, laughing nervously, "Not that I'd only want to wear it because I saw you wearing one."

Bret turns around to catch a glimpse of the garment in question. When Jemaine steps away from Mel, Bret is greeted by the image of a bespectacled man with clowns and other strange creatures erupting from his head peering up at him from Jemaine's chest.

Bret decides he'd better get a cookie after all, to help mask the funny taste in his mouth.

  


* * *

  


When they arrive back at the apartment, there's a package in front of the door. It's addressed to Jemaine in Mel's excited curly handwriting, and quite clearly contains a small stack of CDs. Bret steps over it as he enters the apartment, leaving Jemaine out in the hall to deal with his gift.

As Bret heads into the kitchen to get a glass of water, he can hear Jemaine tearing open the paper on the package, then the shushing sound of eco-friendly paperboard CD sleeves sliding against each other. The sound sets Bret's teeth on edge. There's a quiet thump as Jemaine sets his new goodies down on the table. Bret turns around and leans against the counter, eyeing the table warily.

"That was nice of Mel," Jemaine says, coming over to get his own glass of water. He opens the cupboard wide and the door falls off its hinges; this is why Bret has taken to keeping his favorite glass on the counter. "Give me a hand with this, will you?" Jemaine says, holding the door by its round little handle in one hand, and grabbing a glass off the shelf with the other.

"No," says Bret, taking his water over to the table and sitting down.

"But you're the one who broke it," Jemaine says, setting down his glass by the sink so he can wrangle the door around with both hands.

"No," Bret reminds him, "you broke it when you were seeing how far you could stretch those rubber bands you found."

"Oh, that's right, I did," Jemaine admits. He looks thoughtful for a moment. "Those were some really strong rubber bands."

"They were," Bret says, but then remembers that he's taking a stand here. "And that's why you have to fix it."

"But it'll be really difficult to fix it on my own," Jemaine says.

"It's really difficult to do lots of things on your own," Bret points out, "so maybe you should think about that for a while." He leaves the kitchen to make sure he's not tempted to help Jemaine after all. Maybe he can do some more research for his new song in the meantime.

  


* * *

  


Later, about the time Bret's starting to think about finding food for dinner - while continuing to wonder how one channel can show an entire afternoon's worth of nature documentaries and not mention fish or birds once - Jemaine wanders into the living room and says, "Murray wants to have a band meeting tomorrow." 

"Can't," Bret says. "Dave and I are going to the zoo. It's free admission."

"Oh, right, the bears," Jemaine says. "You know, I heard the bears went straight for a hot dog cart instead of going after any of the people." Bret hadn't really read the article Dave showed him, so he's glad to hear that nobody got eaten. Except for some hot dogs.

"So, what should I tell Murray about the meeting?" Jemaine asks. He sounds a little down, and Bret notices that there are bandages on three of his fingers, as well as some large flakes of paint on his shirt. It was pretty hard not to go in and help Jemaine when he heard some of the noises he made while trying to reattach the cupboard door; he'd had to turn up the volume on a documentary about llamas just to drown it out.

"You can tell Murray I'm going to the zoo and nowhere else," Bret answers with finality. 

"Okay," Jemaine says, nodding, "I'll tell Murray that."

  


* * *

  


It's Wednesday afternoon, and Murray has taken an extra-long lunch break to perform an off-site band meeting. "All right," Murray says, consulting his travel-ready pocket-sized notepad, used exclusively for meetings on the go. "Band meeting, zoo edition. Bret?"

"Present," Bret answers.

"Jemaine?"

"He's not present right now," Bret explains, "but he'll be back soon."

"Well, where is he?" Murray asks, turning his head carefully from side to side while he tries to locate Jemaine without dislodging the lorikeet currently perched atop his head.

"He's getting nectar for the birds," Bret nods his head toward the entrance where Jemaine is currently talking to the enthusiastic young zoo attendant who greeted them when they arrived. 

"Jemaine: soon-to-be-present," Murray narrates as he writes, "And Murray, currently present." The bird on his head whistles and starts inching down the side of his head toward his shoulder. 

"And Dave was here," Bret adds. His new plan for roll call, developed just now, is to fight compulsiveness with... even more compulsiveness. 

"Why is Dave here?" Murray asks, thrown out of his groove. He looks around, and the bird clinging to his hair squawks unhappily.

"Coming to the zoo was his idea," Bret explains, "and he's not in here anymore."

"Why not?"

"He decided to leave because there were too many birds flying around," Bret says. This is not technically true; Dave had actually said there were "too many freaky-ass, bug-eyed, giant neon-colored cockroaches flying around," but Bret doesn't think it's so important to communicate the exact content of Dave's speech as the general sentiment.

"Well of course there are birds flying around," Murray says, "it's a lorikeet house. That's what lorikeets do. If he wanted to be somewhere where there weren't birds flying around, he shouldn't have come into a place like this."

"Then it's a good thing he left," Bret says.

"Yes, okay, and now Jemaine is present again," Murray says.

"And I bring delicious nectar," Jemaine says, primarily addressing the bird on Murray's shoulder. He holds out the cup of nectar given to him by a helpful zoo attendant. The bird shuffles away from him, seeking the comfort and safety of Murray's hair.

"Now," Murray says, pointedly ignoring Jemaine's shenanigans, "what is this Jemaine's telling me about you acting strange and not helping him fix a cupboard?"

"I don't think I should have to help him fix a cupboard that he broke, especially since I'll be fixing everything on my own when he leaves the band," Bret says. It seems like a perfectly obvious conclusion, in light of the recent evidence.

"What?" Murray and Jemaine say, basically in unison. Jemaine starts saying it first, but he speaks more slowly than Murray, so it averages out to unison.

"I can see all the signs," Bret says, doing a pretty good job of keeping his voice calm and even, "with the glowing review and the t-shirt and the minutely-detailed glass sculpture. So if you're going to leave the band to run off and offer yourself up as protégé to your fancy folk-rock guru, you should just go and get it over with."

"I'm not actually planning to offer myself as anyone's protégé," Jemaine says, "So you can probably stop worrying about that. I don't think I'd be a very good protégé anyway."

"Nonsense, Jemaine, I'm sure you'd be a fine protégé," Murray says, though he stops when both Bret and Jemaine turn to look at him, wondering where he's going with this thought. "On second thought, nevermind. Carry on."

"Hey, are you guys going to be much longer?" Dave asks from the other side of the fence.

"Nah, I think we're almost done here," Jemaine answers. "Bret thought I was going to leave the band and join up with another artist and he'd be left with no one to banter with, so he was acting out a bit and made me fix a cupboard all by myself."

"Yeah, okay, I didn't ask for an in-depth recap of your little gay soap opera over there," Dave says, "If you guys are staying to chat, I'm gonna go look at the tigers."

"Ooh, there are tigers?" Murray asks excitedly.

"Hell yeah there are tigers, and they are awesome. What kind of crappy zoo do you think we have here?" Dave says.

"You guys can finish this meeting off the record," Murray says, carefully brushing his bird friend off of his shoulder. "I'm going to go see some tigers." 

"Some _awesome_ tigers," Dave chimes in from outside. 

Bret casts a sideways look at Jemaine; he's still holding a cup of bright red sugar water, and he doesn't have a single bird on him. Bret holds out his arm, where a couple of birds have opted to perch. Jemaine offers them the nectar half-heartedly, but he smiles hugely when one of the birds hops over and takes a drink.

"Bret," Jemaine says.

"Yeah?" Bret says.

"Do you think we should go see the tigers with Dave and Murray?" Jemaine asks.

Bret thinks about the questions for a moment, wanting to make sure he's being honest. "I do," he answers firmly. He lifts his arm a bit to encourage the birds to fly off, and Jemaine hands off his cup of nectar to the nearest young child, and then they go see the tigers.

The tigers are, as promised, extremely awesome.

  


* * *

  


Jemaine's bed is empty again on Thursday morning. Bret's eating his breakfast at the table when he hears the key turning in the lock. Jemaine walks in carrying a newspaper, a manila folder, and a paper sack which turns out to contain a bunch of half-price bananas. Jemaine hands one to Bret and sits down at the table, setting the paper and the folder down in front of him and starting to peel a banana of his own.

"Where'd you go?" Bret asks around a mouthful of delicious but very squishy banana mush.

"I went to see Greg about putting another review on the website," Jemaine explains, "but he said Murray said we're not doing that anymore."

"We're not?" asks Bret. He won't pretend he's ready to buy into the whole music review charade, but he felt he should at least make up to Jemaine and help out with the next one.

"Yeah, but that's okay," Jemaine continues, "Murray said we won't get in trouble with the union if Greg takes down the website and we give back the press passes."

"Oh," Bret says. He wonders if he should be more surprised than he is. "Well, that's good news, I suppose."

"Yeah, I guess," Jemaine says. He takes another bite of his banana and chews on it glumly. "It's just that this review was even better than the last one."

"What group did you review?" Bret asks, trying to think when Jemaine would have had time in the last week to see a show, and not to dwell on why he wouldn't have invited Bret along.

"Us," Jemaine says. Bret looks at him, and Jemaine goes on, "When we went to the zoo, yesterday." He opens the manila folder and pushes a sheet of paper over to Bret. At the top, in Jemaine's neatest handwriting, it says _Flight of the Conchords, Free Admission Day at the Zoo/Band Meeting._

"Huh," Bret says, looking over the review. He wouldn't have thought to write a review of their own event, especially one where they weren't even playing any music. 

Jemaine's right; he has written a very good review. There's a lot about the tigers, which Bret agrees were the clear highlight of the excursion, and also a whole paragraph about Bret's suitability as a perch for finicky birds, as well as some praise for his skill at spotting large carnivorous animals hiding in tall grasses (Bret takes a great deal of pride in this skill, and he doesn't often get to display it living in an urban setting as he does.)

"Can I keep this?" Bret asks. 

"Yeah, I guess that'd be okay," Jemaine says, but he's smiling while he says it. 

 


End file.
